10 Amazing Rock Albums That Will Scare You To Death

In the era of Flower Power, the Velvet Underground felt like the antithesis of everything rock was supposed to be. Right around the time that bands like The Grateful Dead were making waves out of California, Lou Reed's snide take on rock and roll felt like some of the most offensive music ever created, with songs that had to do with everything from drug use on Heroin to the bondage scenes of Venus in Furs. If you thought that their debut was a little bit chaotic though, you weren't prepared for what was coming next.

Following up their art rock masterpiece, White Light/White Heat is the kind of album that you almost need to be in a certain mindset to hear, with the production being completely blown out and the band trying to make as much noise as possible. Although there are still some art rock tendencies like on the short story The Gift, the main focus behind this project was to make something that was a lot more gritty than before, like the strange vocal affectations on Lady Godiva's Operation or the tortured love story going on in Here She Comes Now.

By the time you get to Sister Ray though, you've reached a new level of darkness, where the band carry on for the better part of 17 minutes, mercilessly beating their instruments and Lou Reed sounding like a feral animal as the songs keeps building and building to its climax. Since acts like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin wouldn't arrive on the scene for a few months later, heavy metal may have arrived a little bit earlier than we thought on this record.